


mid-youth crisis

by coraxes



Series: we tried the world (it wasn't for us) [2]
Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: (kind of), Dishonored: Death of the Outsider, Forgiveness, Gen, Post-Canon, Retirement, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-23
Updated: 2019-06-23
Packaged: 2020-05-18 14:22:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19336303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coraxes/pseuds/coraxes
Summary: It's been years since Emily Kaldwin last saw Meagan Foster. Turns out they both have a few things to get off their chests.





	mid-youth crisis

**Author's Note:**

> directly after finishing a longish time-travel fix-it fic, I learned that canon itself has time-travel fix-it fic. so this contains spoilers for the wiki summary for _The Veiled Terror_. if it contradicts the actual canon of the book I don't care and don't want to know. ~~imo going back on human!outsider to suit the status quo is the coward's way out but ANYWAY~~
> 
> title is from "jackie and wilson" by hozier, aka "the old retired assassins song"

Sokolov hadn’t meant to tell Emily that Meagan was working for him. Emily saw his grimace after he let the name slip while telling Emily how he came to own a chunk of voidrite. His secrecy stung, but she understood the impulse to protect his friend. The last time she’d seen Meagan, Emily had been…harsh. She pressed until Sokolov gave her directions to Meagan’s house, a few streets down from his workshop.

As it turned out, Emily didn’t even have to travel that far through the bracing Tyvian spring. The music of bone charms grated in her ear as Emily walked through a cluster of market stalls only a street away from Sokolov’s studios. Emily pulled on her dark vision and stopped in her tracks. At least a dozen charms gleamed through the crowd. She shook herself and got moving again with the flow of traffic, trying not to draw attention. All the charms were hanging off two people near the edge of the market.

Now she didn’t plan on taking the charms, but they piqued her curiosity. Even the most powerful witches only braved one or two bone charms; Emily and her father were the only exceptions she’d met. Did these people have marks as well? Emily ended the spell so that she could see more than silhouettes, and realized that one of them was Meagan. The second was an older man she didn’t recognize. They were talking to one another in an alley just barely off the road, backs to the wall. The man leaned over and kissed Meagan, comfortable and perfunctory. Meagan grinned and muttered something to him while he straightened as if to leave.

Meagan’s eyes flickered over the crowd, caught on Emily, and went wide.

Emily managed a smile; she didn’t want Meagan thinking she had come to execute her. Even if the whole tableau made her uneasy. Why was Meagan holding on to so many bone charms when she never had on the _Dreadful Wale_? And the man—something about him set her on edge, a niggling sense of familiarity she couldn’t place. But as she approached, he disappeared into the crowd.

Emily decided to worry about him later. With her powers, it would be easy enough to find him if necessary.

“Your Majesty,” Meagan said, dry and a little wary.

Or maybe Emily was speaking to Billie Lurk now. She looked different. Not just her clothes, red and black instead of the neutrals she wore in Karnaca, but in the way she held herself. Before she had made herself too inconsequential to mess with; now she seemed too confident, too dangerous to bother. 

“Meagan,” Emily said, just as cool, and Meagan didn’t correct her. She’d keep using the name, then. It was easier to think of her that way. Meagan, at least, had been an ally. “It’s good to see you again.”

She gave Emily a strained smile and stuffed her hands in her pockets. “I don’t guess this is a coincidence.”

Almost since she’d killed Delilah, Emily had rehearsed what she’d say to Meagan if they met again. She’d flip-flopped on her opinion of the woman half a dozen times and changed the speech to match. But now that the meeting was actually happening all her words had disappeared, and Emily didn’t even have an attendant with notecards handy. “Not really. I came to visit Sokolov while I was touring the Isles. He let slip that you were around, so I was on my way to say hello.” The wind cut through Emily and she shivered, pulling her elbows close to her sides. “Want to get away from the crowd?”

“There’s a park not far from here,” Meagan offered, and at Emily’s nod turned to lead her there. _Park_ was a generous term. Someone had just planted grass and flowers in an empty lot between two buildings. But the buildings shielded the little patch from the wind, and there were benches set around the edges and a handful of children playing with skip-ropes in between them. They sat on one of the benches, and Meagan broke the silence again while Emily was still trying to figure out what to say. “How have you been?”

“Good,” Emily said on reflex, then gave the question some actual thought. “It was difficult right after the coup. But it…it got easier once I stopped avoiding everything.” She still had to clean up the City Watch, still missed Alexei, still sometimes found the staff crying or frozen with memory in hidden corners. But Emily had been doing most of her duties as the empress since she was ten. Ignoring them had wasted a lot of time and made everything worse when she actually dealt with it.

Meagan leaned back against the cold brick wall. “I know what you mean.”

Honestly, Emily expected more smugness, after all those speeches on the skiff. She fidgeted with her seal ring and finally said, “You told me a lot of things in Serkonos that I needed to hear. And I wanted to apologize.”

Meagan crossed her arms. “You don’t—”

Too late; Emily had prepared her speech, and she was going to get through it. “Without you I never would have taken back the throne. I can’t forget what you did, but…you tried to make up for it. That matters. I’m sorry I acted like it didn’t.”

“No one would react well to learning what I did,” Meagan said tiredly, shaking her head. “I didn’t expect forgiveness. Just thought you deserved to know, whatever you might have decided to do with that knowledge.”

Was it forgiveness she offered? Emily didn’t know. “Still,” she said.

Stiffly Meagan nodded. “Thank you.”

That should have been it, mission fulfilled, but Emily was too curious. Meagan had _changed._ Why? Just because of the coup? “I saw your face on some Karnacan wanted posters. What had you breaking and entering?” Emily had known Meagan was a smuggler, and had of course done plenty of breaking and entering herself. She hadn’t expected Meagan to become a law-abiding citizen after the coup; she just didn’t know why she’d gotten more hands-on all of a sudden.

“It’s a long story,” Meagan said with a grimace. “One I’m not sure you’ll want to hear.”

Emily’s head tilted. “Well, now I’m curious.”

“I went looking for Daud.”

Time seemed to freeze for a moment. The grating of Meagan’s bone charms in her ears intensified. Emily had to stay calm; she had to breathe. Meagan was still talking.

“There was some time travel involved. I’ve heard you’re familiar with the concept.”

Alright, Emily hadn’t expected _that._ “What?” she snapped, louder than she meant to. One of the girls playing in the park stopped her game long enough to give Emily a stink-eye, and Emily glared back.

“You…there was a timeline before where something happened to Aramis, right? And I lost my arm and eye. But you stopped that.” Meagan tapped her fingernails against her temple as if expecting something besides skin to be there. Emily gave a jerky nod. “I found Daud a few months after the coup. He and I turned the Outsider human, but with the Outsider gone the Void started devouring the world.”

Daud was out there. Meagan had said she was sorry and then she went and _found him._ More than found, if her gut feeling was right. Emily clenched her fists.

“We limped along for a couple of years, but it was a losing battle,” Meagan continued. “I used the void rifts to travel back in time, merged with my old self, and made sure the same thing wouldn’t happen again. That’s about it, really. Anton keeps me occupied, but I’m…retired, I guess.”

“ _Just_ you?” Emily snapped, and Meagan hesitated. There were other questions Emily should be asking, but only one seemed to matter. She felt frozen, brittle; one wrong move and she’d crack. “The man you were with earlier…that was him, wasn’t it.”

The Heart had said Daud was like a father to her. Well, Mother hadn’t known everything.

Meagan nodded slowly. Her hands curled into fists at her side.

The bone charms would stand out; he couldn’t have gone far, and Emily could move quickly even in this unfamiliar city. It had been years since Corvo had told her about their fight. Sparing Daud’s life…she couldn’t imagine it as a child. Even now—she’d _seen_ him, he was _there—_ the thought spun around her head in an infuriating loop.

After Meagan had told Emily about her identity, Emily had snuck into her cabin and listened to the old audiograph there. It had left her like this, too, reeling and paralyzed at once. He’d saved her life the first time Delilah threatened it, and she had never known.

She and Daud could never be even. With Meagan Emily might consider it, but for Daud there could be no forgiveness.

Still…Emily could let him go. He had saved her once from a threat no one else knew existed; she could spare him as her father had.

“Okay,” Emily said finally, and Meagan breathed again. “Okay.”

She rose from her seat. Emily didn’t trust herself to say much else; there wasn’t much else to say anyway. So it startled her when Meagan asked, “Have you talked to the Outsider lately? How’s he doing?”

Emily blinked at the genuine concern in her voice. She and Corvo didn’t talk about the Outsider casually, barely talked about their powers at all. Strange to hear Meagan just bring him up like that. “He’s…fine?” Emily managed. Dramatic as ever, but she was starting to enjoy that. “I think.”

“Hard bastard to read, isn’t he,” Meagan said, sounding almost fond. “Tell him I said to take care.”

The knot in Emily’s chest loosened, and she managed to unclench her fists. “Take care yourself, Meagan.”

Meagan rose to her feet and for a moment Emily was on the veranda, eyes trained on the assassin rising from the palace roof. Then she blinked and it was Meagan again: same tired eyes, but her smile came easier now than it ever had on the _Wale._ “I always do.”

**Author's Note:**

> yes i'm going to write a prequel ft. how billie/daud happened in this universe, have you met me? that was actually what I meant to write first and then this happened.
> 
> as always--comments and kudos are much appreciated. and hmu on tumblr and pillowfort @coraxes or twitter @annuxgen if you want to talk dishonored.


End file.
